In the cattle farming sector, and dairy farming in particular, the animals are accommodated in stables or barns at least for a part of the year. In a tie-stable each animal is held in a fixed location and is fed and optionally milked there. More recently there is a trend towards cubicle stable or free stables. The animals can walk around freely therein and each animal can go and stand there or lie down in a cubicle and rest and/or chew the cud. Feeding and milking may take place elsewhere at a feeding fence or feeding station and a milking machine. A cubicle stable is provided with one or more rows of neighboring cubicles, and each cubicle being defined by a rear short end, an open front short side forming the entrance and exit for the animal to the cubicle, with lateral partitions extending at the long sides of the cubicle, and with a rear partition limiting the animal's movement at said rear short side. The positioning of an animal in the cubicle is such that the animal is orientated substantially parallel to the longitudinal direction of the cubicle. The floor space of a cubicle is commonly provided with a kind of mattress or covered with a dry material like straw and/or sawdust. A cubicle for dairy cattle is commonly in a range of about 1.0 to about 1.4 meters wide, more typically about 1.1 to about 1.3 meters, and up to about 2.4 meters long. The partitions or dividers are commonly formed from a metal tube construction, for instance tube parts curved in a U-shape, R-shape, P-shape or other form, which are attached to posts anchored in the floor and/or to the rear end. Furthermore, in a cubicle stable in front of each row of cubicles there is the barn floor, which optionally could be provided with a slatted floor. In most stable there is in practice a small offset between the cubicle floor and the barn floor.
It is important that both the barn floor and the cubicle floors are frequently cleaned from dirt, in particular from manure. Several methods and corresponding devices are known in the art for cleaning barn floors from manure and other dirt in a stable, such as a manure slide. Some of these methods and corresponding devices allow for cleaning of the front part of the floor of a row of cubicles while simultaneously cleaning the barn floor. Cleaning of a row of cubicle floors is often done by means of rotatable brushes. A disadvantage of most of these known devices is that they require the involvement of an operator during the cleaning action. A further disadvantage is that the cubicle floors are cleaned substantially parallel to the front sides of the cubicle and for a non-interrupted cleaning operation this requires that in a row of cubicles none of the cubicles are occupied by an animal.
In the art also methods and corresponding devices are known for cleaning individual cubicles. For example such a device is known from US patent document US-2002/0133899-A1 (Lely) as published on 26 Sep. 2002. The known unmanned device cleans a cubicle floor in its longitudinal direction by using a manure displacement device and can be provided further with a manure slide to clean at least a part of the slatted floor or barn floor. Detecting means are provided which are capable of observing the dirt present on the cubicle floor.
However in practice, an animal, such as a cow, can be hurt by the cleaning devices, while contrarily some non-occupied cubicles are not cleaned.